g that
resembled legerdemain; and he stood at the door and watched them with a
smile that was not agreeable.

"Well, Helen!" he said at last; and Lady Tressilvain started, and her
husband rose to the full height of his five feet nothing, dropping the
pack which he had been so nimbly manipulating for his wife's amusement.

"Where the devil did you come from?" blurted his lordship; but his wife
made a creditable appearance in her role of surprised sisterly
affection; and when the two men had gone through the form of family
greeting they all sat down for the conventional family confab.

Tressilvain said little but drank a great deal of whisky--his long,
white, bony fingers were always spread around his glass--unusually long
fingers for such a short man, and out of all proportion to the scant
five-foot frame, topped with a little pointed head, in which the eyes
were set exactly as glass eyes are screwed into the mask of a fox.

"Bertie and I have been practising leads from trick hands," observed
Lady Tressilvain, removing the ice from her glass and filling it from a
soda bottle which Malcourt uncorked for her.

"Well, Herby," said Malcourt genially, "I suppose you and Helen play a
game well worth--ah--watching."

Tressilvain looked dully annoyed, although there was nothing in his
brother-in-law's remark to ruffle anybody, except that his lordship did
not like to be called Herby. He sat silent, caressing his glass; and
presently his little black eyes stole around in Malcourt's direction,
and remained there, waveringly, while brother and sister discussed the
former's marriage, the situation at Luckless Lake, and future prospects.

That is to say, Lady Tressilvain did the discussing; Malcourt, bland,
amiable, remained uncommunicatively polite, parrying everything so
innocently that his sister, deceived, became plainer in her questions
concerning the fortune he was supposed to have married, and more
persistent in her suggestions of a winter in New York--a delightful and
prolonged family reunion, in which the Tressilvains were to figure as
distinguished guests and virtual pensioners of everybody connected with
his wife's family.

"Do you think," drawled Malcourt, intercepting a furtive glance between
his sister and brother-in-law, to that gentleman's slight confusion, "do
you think it might prove interesting to you and Herby? Americans are so
happy to have your countrymen to entertain--particularly when their
credential